Second Such Encounter
by Eurydice
Summary: What if the sniper hadn't missed? Season One: Alternate ending to 'Sniper Zero'. Story now complete.
1. Chapter 1

A Second Such Encounter 

by Eurydice

Rating: M

Timeline: An angst-riddled alternate ending to "Sniper Zero" (Season 1).

Disclaimer: The only things that belong to me about this story are the words I used, in the order in which I used them. (This does not include the small paragraph I lifted directly from "Uncertainty Principle.")

- - - -

Chapter 1: Here 

Every time he thought about it (which was every day until his death), it struck Don as ridiculous, teetering on the edge of ironic, that his brother's last word was, "What?" His genius brother, a phenomenon, who'd always had all the answers down to the tiniest minutiae, had gone down with a bang and the word "what". Just like that.

That day was preserved with shocking clarity, a neat little capsule of pain that needled him afresh when he allowed himself to think about it. He remembered it all: Terry finding the blue van, the two of them clearing people out of the square. The adrenaline was there, held back but ready to charge into action. Thoughts ricocheted off each other like pinballs – how long the sniper would wait, which building was he likely in, whether Edgerton was in place yet – and all of them came to a screeching halt when the first shot rang out.

By then, of course, all thought was gone.

- - -

When it happened, it happened fast. He saw Charlie across the square, writing something on a clipboard. He was opening his mouth to speak – _What are you doing here_, or maybe that old favorite _Get down!_ – when the report of a rifle echoed off the buildings. Now the adrenaline poured into his veins, and his legs began to carry him across the square to where his brother was standing, apparently having been too deep in thought to hear the gunshot.

This time he could speak, and did, yelling for Charlie to get down. David echoed it, charging forward, and as the second shot sounded he hit Charlie with his shoulder and sent them both crashing to the ground. There was a third shot, and then nothing except for shouts and the _whuppa-whuppa_ of the circling helicopter.

_He missed_, thought Don in a bizarre mixture of panic and exultation. _The sniper missed, he's never full-on _missed_ before, and now_ –

He skidded to a halt and grabbed Charlie's shoulders. His ears didn't even register Terry and David calling his name. "Charlie," he said, "are you crazy?" He pulled him to sitting, not knowing whether to hug him or hit him, and only when he felt the spreading warmth on his chest and the arm around his brother did he register that something was wrong.

Charlie hadn't looked up. Hadn't said anything. His hands, instead of coming up to Don's arm in the reassuring gesture of _I'm-all-right_, were lying limply on the sidewalk. And instead of a heart pounding with fear-drenched relief, there was only that spreading warmth. "Charlie."

"Don." It was Terry's voice, shaky. "Don, put him down."

Put him down. Yes. He moved backward, and Charlie's head trailed off his arm to slump gently onto the ground. His eyes were open. He looked confused. _Get down? Why?_

Don stood. He knew vaguely that the front of his shirt and the sleeve of his jacket were drenched with blood, but his first concern was for Charlie. "Get someone over here," he said loudly. His voice was too sharp to his own ears. "A paramedic. Something."

Edgerton had arrived. He seemed unruffled, but his face was pale. "He shouldn't have had time for two shots," he said. "Don, I –"

"Did you get him?"

The sniper – the _other_ sniper – nodded. "Yeah."

"Good." Don stooped to pick up the clipboard that had clattered to the pavement. It was a diagram of the square, full of lines and numbers and letters and angles. A small rectangle of windows on one of the buildings was circled, and the word "Here?" had been added in Charlie's thoughtful, legible printing.

"He was close," muttered Edgerton. "Why the hell…"

Don turned back to where Charlie lay. David was kneeling beside him, trying to keep people away. He had closed Charlie's eyes. "Why is he still here?" Don demanded. "I told you, get someone over here."

Terry put a hand on his arm. "Don, there's nothing they can do."

"He's not even supposed to be here," he said. His throat felt approximately the size of a reed. The breeze was suddenly too hot on his face, and he pulled off his jacket and let it drop to the ground. The blood had soaked through and stained the sleeve and front of his shirt beneath it, but he barely noticed.

Terry tried again. "Don."

"No," he said. "He's not supposed to be here." And with that, he walked away. His legs no longer felt like his own, none of his body felt like his own. There was a high-pitched buzzing in his ears and his eyes swam out of focus.

_Charlie looked up, his pencil poised above the clipboard as he heard the alarm in Don's voice. He had not heard the shot; he did not know enough to be afraid of where he was. All he knew was that, given one or two more variables, he could figure out exactly where his brother should go, and all of this would end, not in gunfire, but in a simple arrest. And so he paused in his writing. He looked up. And he said, "What?"_

Feeling jolted back into Don's legs as he crashed to his knees. His head swam as though he would faint, but instead he pitched forward and caught himself with both hands, skinning them - tomorrow there would be faint red lines on his palms and fingertips. Terry spoke his name in alarm, but he couldn't respond. Her arms encircled his waist, and he felt her face and chest press into his back. With a sour taste in his mouth, he turned to her and took hold of her shoulders. She looked at him unflinchingly, her eyes shining but not yet overspilling.

"I need you to do something for me," he said.

- - -

He had the presence of mind to change out of his bloodsoaked shirt before leaving his father's house. As he made his way down the street, he turned on the radio as loud as his ears would let him. He just had to get through the day, that was all. Just get through the day and then…

What?

He knew that the shock hadn't worn off yet. The grief and anger were there, but muted, buried under layers of duty and obligation. The first step was to tell his father, which he'd done, calmly and softly and slowly. He'd broken bad news to people before, people he was close to, people he loved. He'd dealt with death over and over, and the muted buried part of him was screaming (but distantly, oh, so distantly) that it wasn't fair, first his mother, then his brother.

He pushed it away.

The Cal Sci campus was lovely in the burgeoning twilight, all golds and reds, with a soft breeze gently stirring over his skin. Don could hear laughter, and it hurt, but he pushed that away, too.

Down a musty corridor that smelled largely of chalk dust, a smell Don would forever associate with Charlie and the garage and that horrible time before his mother's death, a door stood partly open. As he approached it, it swung open completely, revealing the curious and slightly worried face of Charlie's mentor.

"Don," he said, and stepped back to allow him entrance. "We got Terry's call. What's wrong?"

Amita was at the back of the otherwise empty classroom, leaning on a window. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, her black curls stirring in the faint breeze from the paddling ceiling fan. Looking at her almost broke Don's resolve, and he forced himself to look elsewhere.

"Larry, Amita, please sit down." He sounded professional, detached. Just doing my job, just telling you how it is, not getting involved, just laying it down and smoothing it out. It's what I'm good at; it's what I do.

Larry sat on a desk, but Amita did not move. "What's going on?" she asked. There was a sharpness there, a slight acid not usually present in her low, pleasant voice. It was as if she already knew. Probably, Don would reflect later, she did.

He'd had the story planned out, had even rehearsed it. He'd told his father the details first, and broken it to him as gently as possible… which hadn't done a damn thing. Crime scene. Followed me. First shot missed. Second didn't. Clipboard.

It was a good, logical progression, one that would answer more of the questions before they had a chance to be asked. It was a technique he'd learned long ago – the more you give up front, the more easily your audience will accept what you say, be it truth or lies. He'd used it countless times in his job, and that's what this was, right? Just another part of his job. Except what came out wasn't, "Something happened today," or even, "Charlie and I, we've been working on a case."

What came out was, "Charlie's dead."

There had been an ambulance. There had been everything, the holy trinity of crime scenes – cop cars, of course, dozens of them; an ambulance; even a fire truck. People in blue uniforms and hats, wearing gloves on their hands and carrying bright red boxes that looked like makeup cases. The dance was tightly rehearsed, their moves quick and delicate and studied, but his brother had a hole in his back the size of a grapefruit, Don had seen it, had _felt_ it, and he… and he…

_He watched them with hollow eyes. Hope, that most unwelcome and unwanted visitor, was nudging its way into his mind. Not all gunshots are fatal, it said. This case is proof of that; one of your sniper victims got off with a sore shoulder. Don knew, of course he knew, that this was different – no one with a wound that big could live for long. But Hope, detested Hope, was there, only to slouch off petulantly as its blue-uniformed bearers slowed and finally stopped their dance. _

Larry was sitting motionlessly on the desk, one hand pressed against his cheek, and in that moment he looked like nothing so much as a maiden aunt much offended by the swearing of some young ruffian. "Dead?" he said, as if it were an unfamiliar word. "How… what?"

And now Don got to tell his story, the story he'd told once already today and would likely repeat until it became a full-on monologue. Through it all, Larry's hand remained on his face. He shook his head from time to time, and asked only one question in a clogged, inscrutable voice: "He knew where the sniper was. Why would he put himself in the path of danger?" He was crying now, his face red.

"He wanted to help."

Don and Larry turned to Amita. She was still by the window, her arms still crossed, crying freely. Her voice, however, was clear. "He wanted to prove that he was right, that he could outthink that Agent Edgerton. And he wanted to show off his diagram, his equation." She smiled a little. "Charlie likes to be right."

It seemed as though she would say more, that words were hovering at the tip of her tongue, but as she began to say them, she broke down completely. She let out an anguished cry and sagged against the window, her face in her long hands ("pianist's hands," Don's mother would have called them). Don watched her helplessly. He wanted to comfort her, but if he did that…

His father had broken down, too. And Don had comforted him, had been there to Take Care Of Things, but had had to leave. He could feel his own grief building at the edges of his eyes, the way his arms and chest recalled the memory of Charlie's blood, the way his knees hinged and threatened to give way. He could feel it in the muted part of him. He could feel it clawing its way to the top, and he struggled mightily as he saw Amita sob into her hands.

Larry rose from the desk, stumbled a bit, and went to her. He had always impressed Don as brilliant but awkward, the kind of man who could figure out the tiniest details of existence but would sometimes forget to put his shoes on in the morning. (A lot like Charlie, in other words, but oh, that thought was poison, a scorpion's sting.) The awkwardness was gone now as he pulled Amita to him and held her, murmuring words that Don couldn't hear but could guess. _It's all right_ was popular in situations like this, as was _It'll be okay_.

He felt intrusive standing here, as though he were spying on a private moment. But he stayed. He stayed until he could overhear Larry's soft litany of comforts. "I know," he was whispering. "Amita, I know. It's okay, he loved you. He loved you."

That did it. Don turned, threw the door open and launched himself into the hallway. It was mostly empty, but the few students present gawked at him as he hurried for the exit. His throat seemed to be closing in on itself, and he became suddenly aware that he couldn't breathe. It was as though someone had pushed a hot chunk of slate down his throat, and he gasped for air. Some came – not enough – and he tried again, another huge, rasping pull.

"Hey," said a voice. "You need some help?"

"No," he managed to say. "No." He continued down the hallway. He made it to a corner and gave up, sagging to the ground with his forehead to his knees. He could still smell chalk dust, and could almost hear – no, he could hear it, there was no _almost_ about it, he could hear the frantic tick-scratch of chalk on blackboard and his brother's strangled tone.

_Statistically, you're dead now. You understand what that means? A man aimed a gun at your head and fired. The fact that you survived is an anomaly, and it's unlikely to be the outcome of a second such encounter._

He had been right. And today, a man had aimed a gun at Charlie's chest, fired, and missed. In the second such encounter, he had not missed. And now his brother was dead.

Don covered his head with his arms like a child hiding in a closet. He was unaware, uncaring of the stares he was drawing. Presently, he heard voices. Two of them. Larry and Amita – they were saying his name. He couldn't answer. He didn't want to answer, or to look up, or to move. After some time, he felt Amita's cool pianist's hand on the back of his neck, and she whispered, "It's okay, Don. It's okay. He loved you."

To the students in the hallway, they made a strange tableau: the absentminded professor and a comely graduate student, sitting on either side of a sobbing, dark-haired stranger, their arms around him and each other. They would hear the news tomorrow, perhaps even tonight, and understand.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Now

They had never been religious, not really. Don couldn't think of the last time he'd observed Shabbat or checked the label at the grocery store for the little K to indicate that something was kosher. The last time they'd made a big deal over Passover had been the year that Charlie had turned eleven. Their mother had insisted, but now, standing in the bathroom doorway with his sleeves rolled up, Don couldn't remember why.

"Dad," he said.

Alan turned. "Mm?"

Don paused. It occurred to him that this might not be the best time to bring this up. "That one year, when we kept kosher for Passover… why did we do that? What was special about that year?"

Alan's face was blank. "I, uh… I don't remember." His next thought came to Don like an arrow: _Charlie would know_. With a small smile, he turned back toward the crowded living room, leaving Don standing in the doorway and wondering what he was doing there in the first place.

With nothing better to do, he turned on the water in the sink and splashed some onto his face. It felt good, cold – it had been hot that day, and Don could feel the sweat drying on his temples from standing outside in the sun. He looked up, expecting to see his own dark eyes and narrow nose, but instead saw nothing but blackness. Of course.

He reached out and touched the cloth covering the mirror, thinking he'd twitch it aside for a moment, then withdrew his hand. He knew what he'd see. A face flushed from the sun and starting to look a little ragged from the stubble that was growing on his chin. He'd see eyes that were clear and bright without a trace of redness. He'd had no crying jags since his breakdown in the hallways of Cal Sci, and he'd wondered about that. The tears were _there_, the pain was _there_, and it made Don think of that old Led Zeppelin song, the one with the driving blues beat, pounding like a hurricane: _If it keeps on raining, levee's going to break._

He patted his face with a towel and leaned against the bathroom door. The living room was full of people, family members and friends, all there to comfort and talk and, if the occasion arose, laugh. Little by little the grief would come out, and little by little, it would diminish. Shared grief is a blessing, a balm, and Don wanted none of it. But it was expected of him. All of those people in there wanted him to grieve with them, for them, to them. It was… unfair.

As quietly as possible, he made his way into the midst of the crowd. Most everyone was sitting in small clumps, talking animatedly in hushed tones. Some of them looked up as he passed, and one or two touched his arm, but they did not attempt to draw him into conversation. He moved like a ghost through the living room and through the kitchen, not paying attention as his feet carried him on autopilot.

Don looked at his destination with no real surprise. He had not meant to come here, but now that he had, it seemed the most natural place in the world to be. It was where his brother had gone to be alone, and now, all unknowing, Don had done the same.

Except that he wasn't alone. Blinking against the dimness of the garage in contrast to the brightness of the kitchen (it seemed to Don that every bulb in the house was on, as if the light could keep the tragedy at bay), his eyes could just make out a solitary figure crouching by the far wall. It stood, turning to him with the sharp motions of surprise. "Don?"

"Larry? That you?"

It was indeed. He was standing near a chalkboard that had been propped against the wall, covered in the somehow runic symbols of calculus. A few more of the boards were hanging at various spots around the wall, but Don could see most of his brother's collection in a small, haphazard stack halfway behind a long-disused bookcase. "What are you doing in here?" Don asked.

"I'm looking at some of Charles's work. I believe this," and here he gestured to the board on the floor, "was part of your most recent case?"

Don peered at it dubiously. "Damned if I can tell," he said. "All of that stuff is… it's not just Greek to me, it's Martian. But it made sense to him, so…" He swiped a hand through his hair. "Tell me something, Larry, you always call him Charles. Almost never Charlie. Why is that?" There was an old, rickety picnic bench tipped on its side; Don righted it and perched on it.

Larry joined him. "I tend to remember names with greater consistency if I use the ones with which people introduce themselves to me. In Charles's case, that's how it was on my roll sheet: Charles Eppes. Not that he would have been hard to remember." Larry's eyes were far away now, no doubt remembering the first day he'd met Charlie. Don could imagine it in his mind's eye, and felt a sudden wave of affection for the man sitting next to him.

"What was your first impression of him?" Don asked. He wanted this memory; he wanted to turn it over in his mind. He could see it, but hazily; he had a hard time remembering what Charlie looked like when he was that young.

The faraway look persisted. "His youth, of course, stuck out. I knew right away that I was dealing with an extraordinary young man.

"What I remember most is how shy he was that first day. He sat alone in the second row, no one on either side of him, and while I know comparatively little about the complexities of sociology, I could see that this was a situation both sad and typical. He came into my classroom ready to learn, but he seemed so intimidated by the other students that he barely raised his hand in the first week."

"No kidding."

"Oh, he got used to it eventually. It seems that more than an average portion of Charles's life was spent fielding the unlovely stares of people who found him unsettling." Larry shook his head and rested his chin in both hands. "I am not proud to admit that I did my share of staring, too, but…"

Don looked curiously at Larry, who was still looking straight ahead at the board of Charlie's calculations. He seemed to be struggling with what to say next, and with a deep outward breath, he sat up and met Don's inquisitive gaze. "Don, I don't think that your brother ever realized quite how remarkable he was. Oh, he knew that he was brilliant, a great mathematical mind, but to turn out the way he did?" The physicist shook his head in what seemed like bewilderment. "That he became a doctor, a professor, that's not surprising. But that he was able to rise above the stigmas society places on those who are too exceptional, and become a respected colleague and a… friend…" Larry's voice quavered a bit. "We can lay that at your doorstep, I think."

Don could feel his face flushing, and, unable to help himself, he grinned. "Nah," he said, directing his eyes to Charlie's board. All those strange symbols, the sigmas and deltas, were comforting in some way. "Any credit for Charlie's people skills should go to my mom. She wanted to make sure that he knew that he was normal, even if he wasn't."

Larry stood abruptly, his hands steepled in front of his mouth. He made a slow circuit of the garage, feet moving almost silently as he crossed between the chalkboards and the door and the dryer. "I'm sorry," he said absently. "I find sometimes that spontaneous ambulation allows my thoughts to flow more freely. There've been rather too many of them, I have to say."

"I know what that's like," Don said.

The door opened slowly, as though the person on the other side were of two minds about entering. Don and Larry looked up to see Amita step through, looking almost nervous. Her hair was down, her loose curls tumbling over her shoulders. She stopped just inside the door. For a moment, the only sound Don could hear was the low murmur of conversation from the next room. "Amita," he said.

"I… I don't know how this works," she said quietly. It sounded as though she were confessing to something shameful, a dark secret from childhood. "I tried to do some research, but I couldn't concentrate."

"How what works?" asked Don in bewilderment.

It was Larry who answered, smiling gently at Amita. "May I venture the guess that you've never participated in sitting shiva before?"

She nodded, her eyes downcast. "There's so much to remember… I'm to let you speak first," she said, looking briefly at Don, "and I'm not supposed to ask too many questions, or greet anyone, but…"

Don rose and took her hands. They felt small and cold in his own, and he was startled to see deep circles cut under her dark eyes. She'd barely slept, he guessed, and instead lay awake at night, either crying or staring in stunned silence at the ceiling. And yet, with the weight of grief and sleeplessness, she was still so very lovely. Don was not in the least surprised that his brother had been so taken with her.

"We're not much for rules around here," he said. He wanted her to smile. "Tradition is one thing, but you don't need tradition to remember somebody."

Larry had approached in that silent way he had. Together, the three of them sat back down on the rickety picnic bench. It was a tight fit. Don didn't remember the bench being this small, but on the other hand he couldn't remember the last time he'd sat on it. Ten years ago? Fifteen?

_"What are you doing?"_

_Charlie did not look up. "What's it look like I'm doing?"_

_Don considered doubtfully. His brother was lying on his back, head hanging off the edge of the picnic bench, his thin hands holding a book up to his eyes. The book, Don noted, was upside-down. He settled for the easy answer. "Something nerdy."_

_Even in his awkward position, Charlie managed to give him a look that stopped just short of contemptuous. "I am reading," he said archly. "You oughtta try it someday, Donald."_

_Don had been willing to just pass by, maybe feed the fish or see if his dad wanted to work on helping him learn to pitch. It was a spring Sunday, the weather too perfect, the sky too blue, and he was thirteen years old and bored. Picking on Charlie seemed too easy, but he was willing to give it a try. He sat on the other end of the bench. "What book?"_

_Charlie let out a long-suffering sigh. "It's called _A Brief History of Time,_ and before you ask, cos I know you're gonna, I'm reading it upside-down because I read an article in _Omni_ that said that you should try to challenge your brain once a day to keep it sharp. Today, I'm reading upside-down. Tomorrow, I'm going to try brushing my teeth left-handed." Sitting the way he was, his voice sounded strained, but he kept his eyes on the page. _

_"Brushing your teeth left-handed helps keep your brain sharp?" Don mused aloud._

_"Yeah. Try it. It can't hurt."_

_They sat in relative peace for awhile, the breeze ruffling Charlie's pages and Don's hair. Idly, not looking at him, Don reached out one finger and poked Charlie in the shin. He got no response, so he did it again._

_"Stop it."_

_"Stop what?" Poke. Poke._

_"That. Stop it."_

_"I'm not doing anything." Poke._

_"Cut it _out_, Don, I'm not kidding."_

_Poke._

_"Fine. Be that way."_

_Poke._

As Don remembered it, Charlie had won that fight. For a wonder, he had stopped saying anything at all, and Don had finally given up. He grinned at the memory, grinned even as the sorrow resurfaced. And now all the memories were just behind him, as though if he closed his eyes they would play one after another, reminding him over and over again of his brother's life, and worse, his brother's death. Could he feel this way forever? Could he stand that sort of anguish?

Amita's hand crept into his and he gripped it tightly. He was not surprised to see that she had also taken one of Larry's hands, and they sat in a near-reproduction of that day in the halls of Cal Sci.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Again

- - -

Once Edgerton sat down, Don himself was the only one standing. Everyone else was seated, either on the floor, the old picnic bench, or in Larry's case, cross-legged on the dryer. Terry was telling a story, her expression one of mixed sadness and mirth.

"He kept trying to use some kind of mathematical formula," she giggled from her place on the floor. Her legs were tucked under her in a position of almost feline grace.

"No surprise there," said David, from the bench.

"So, Don and I keep going, and Don gets the right answer time after time after time, and Charlie's just looking at us like we each have three heads." Everyone laughed.

"Did he ever figure it out?" asked Amita.

Terry shook her head. "Don told him, eventually."

"I told him? You told him," Don countered. "His puppy-dog eyes stopped working on me when he was… come to think of it, they never worked on me." The group laughed again, even Larry, though he seemed distracted and distant. Terry launched back into the story as Don made his way to where the physicist was sitting.

After a long moment, Larry spoke. "Do you notice anything unusual about this gathering, Don?"

Don turned and surveyed the room carefully. It was the same garage as it had always been, lovably cluttered and dim, smelling of chalk and laundry and cardboard. Blackboards hung here and there like icons praising the gods of mathematics while piles of old rolled-up blueprints lurked dustily in corners. He focused on the people; Amita, Terry, David, and Edgerton were in a clump under one of the lightbulbs, their shadows falling in starlike patterns on the floor and each other.

"I don't know," he said. "I'm trying to think like Charlie, here… okay, well, it's a big garage, but the six people in it aren't spread out very much."

Larry shook his head. "A good observation, and one that your brother undoubtedly would have seized on. I'm looking, though, at a less mathematical peculiarity. Apart from yourself, we are all seated."

"Yeah," said Don. "Not so unusual."

"Not so unusual," Larry agreed. "Yet we have all, whether consciously or unconsciously, eschewed the same thing." He pointed. Don's eyes followed his gesture to a spot some ten feet away, where sat, out in the open, a small stack of folding chairs. They had not been touched. Larry shrugged and went on. "When we do this, when we observe this ritual, we gravitate toward the lowest point possible – a bench, the floor. Death reduces us somehow, we are 'brought low' by the passing of our fellows." He shrugged again, his chin in his hands. "I thought it interesting."

"And yet," Don pointed out, "here you are on the dryer."

"Here I am." Behind him, Don heard Amita's low, clear voice adding a layer to Terry's story, a similar memory. Larry's eyes flicked to her for a moment and, to Don's surprise, he smiled very faintly. "Astronomers choose the highest point possible for stargazing, perhaps hoping that being closer to the heavens will bring them into a more reverential frame of mind. The cosmos are so spectacular, so enormous, that sometimes it seems that, though we are a part of them, their grandeur can never be a part of us. Each of us is inextricably linked to every other point and piece of matter in the universe… our fates, though infinitesimally, are intertwined."

As was often the case, Don was having trouble following Larry's mode of thought. No response he could come up with seemed appropriate, so he settled on, "Is that right?"

Larry saw his expression and laughed a little. "Perhaps I wish I could sidestep being brought low, that I could lift myself over the grief and see the way to inner peace. But the fact is that this observation I've done has only brought me closer to one fact: Your brother has touched so many lives in so many ways. Whereas most people's influence merely drifts, Charles's ricocheted… until some power-mad, self-important psychopath stepped into his path and swallowed him whole."

Don stared. So did everyone else. The garage was filled with the sudden, shattering silence of six people holding a collective breath, afraid to let it out. Larry seemed to notice their attentions and violently shook his head. "I'm sorry, Don," he said, looking at the floor. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

"I do," said Don. "You miss him."

Larry nodded. "Yes, I do."

It came out as a whisper. "So do I."

Larry slid off the dryer and landed awkwardly. He stumbled a bit, and this time Amita stepped forward and was there for him. Don was glad, in a way. Both of them had loved and respected Charlie with intense ferocity, and could relate to him in a way that almost nobody else could. They had grown up loners, but now they could grieve together.

He turned away and nearly bumped into Terry, who had risen from her place on the floor. She put her arms around him, and Don was too drained to do anything but accept. He could feel the warmth of her face, the strength of her arms, and the genuine feeling behind the embrace, and the feeling was peace, the feeling was resolve.

"I'm glad you're here," he mumbled, and was immediately embarrassed that he'd said it.

Terry didn't seem to notice. "I couldn't be anywhere else," she said. "Don… I'm so sorry you have to go through this again. You shouldn't have to, it's not fair."

"Thanks," he said. "I know."

In time, they all sat down again, and this time, they all sat on the floor. Gradually, the talk began, aimless and quiet, by turns knife-sharp and soothing. Don found himself drifting in and out of awareness – like Amita, he had barely slept since the shooting. He remembered David telling a story about his bewilderment upon meeting Charlie, and Amita sweetly recalling all the times that Alan had dropped hints that she and Charlie should become an item. He remembered very clearly when Larry took both of his hands and said, "_Ha'makom yenachem etkhem betokh she'ar avelei Tziyon vi'Yerushalayim_," and his absolute astonishment when Amita, haltingly but confidently, did the same.

Beyond that, things were hazy. He drifted into a dreamless sleep, only to awaken when he heard a soft noise at the edge of his consciousness. Moonlight poured through the scattered windows, and Don sat up, wincing against a crick in his neck. Someone had covered him with a quilt that smelled like dust and cedar. "Hello?" he said, confused.

"It's me, Donnie," said his father, who was sitting with his back against the dryer. "You fell asleep out here?"

"Yeah, I guess I must have." Don twisted his head to the side and felt a satisfying crackle in his neck. "What time is it?"

"Almost four. You know, your aunts were all berating me for letting you get so thin, and you know how much I hate to agree with your aunts, Don, but they're right. You do plan on eating sometime in the near future, don't you?"

Don shrugged. "Haven't been that hungry, Dad."

Alan shook his head. "No. Neither have I."

The quilt was warm and only slightly scratchy. Don could feel himself drowsing again when his father said, "You are not to blame, you know."

Don blinked at him sleepily. "What?"

"Charlie would have gone out there even if you'd told him not to, even if you'd chained him in a basement somewhere, he'd have found a way to get to you. The man who did it was not right in his head, and that is not your fault."

"I… I wasn't thinking that," replied Don honestly.

"No, but in a few days it was going to hit you," said Alan softly. "Maybe even tomorrow. I've seen it before. You take too much on yourself, Don. And if I can convince you now that you're not to blame, I'm going to try." He moved to hunker beside Don, smiling gently. Behind the smile, Don could see the inexpressible sadness in his father's eyes. "I tried to convince Charlie not to go to the crime scenes, that he could help you just as well from a safe distance. And you said it yourself – he was a grown man, he made his own decisions. He decided to help you."

He hesitated. "What is it, Dad?" Don asked.

A sigh. "I don't know if you know this, Don, but Charlie compared himself to you his whole life. He wanted to be like you, and there were times when I think he wanted to _be_ you. I know you spent a lot of your childhood resenting him –"

"No," Don said. His hands were twined into his hair. "No, I never resented him."

"You did," said Alan, without rancor. "You never said so, but there were times when you wished that he wasn't so special. You can't tell me that you never once wished that he was just a normal kid brother."

Don said nothing. It was true, after all. He'd made peace with his brother's brilliance long ago, but it had taken time. Maybe too much time. He remembered staying up past midnight, struggling with math homework that he'd bitterly known would take five-year-old Charlie approximately two minutes to complete. He'd hidden all of his completed math tests under his mattress after Charlie had come to him one morning and offered to show him what he'd done wrong. "You've gotta remember to carry the numbers, Donnie," he'd said, picking at a scab on his knee. "Won't work if you don't."

"Maybe," Don finally answered. "Not for a long time, a _really_ long time, but yeah, sometimes it was kind of a strain, being his brother." He heard the words and couldn't believe he'd said them. He wanted to take them back; he wanted never to have felt that way.

Alan nodded. "People don't tell you this enough, but I don't want you thinking, ever, that you are any less extraordinary than Charlie."

It was too much and he was too exhausted. Images flooded his mind; David's shoulder hitting Charlie's back half a split second after it was too late; Amita's cry of despair at Cal Sci; recitation of the _kaddish;_ shoveling earth onto the casket at the funeral; Larry's outburst. He'd had no sleep and a lot of sun and more sorrow than one body can hold, and it was four o'clock in the morning and the only other person in the room was the one person who could possibly feel the loss as acutely as he himself could, and so he put his hands over his face and felt tears pooling in his palms. He didn't want to do this, he _hated_ to cry, but there was nothing more to do. It was this or go mad.

Alan stayed there, one hand on his shoulder, until he fell asleep again.


	4. Epilogue

The television was on – Robert Redford was threatening to throw Zero Mostel down an elevator shaft – but Don wasn't watching. The sound was down and so were the lights, and he was doing something he almost never did, which was: nothing. He was still, his only motions the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.

It had been just shy of six weeks since the shooting (Don's careful FBI mind never went to "Charlie's death", oh no, it was always "the shooting"). He and his father had begun, slowly, to move past that horrible day and its consequences in their separate ways; Alan had begun spending more and more time in the garden, while Don had taken to spending more and more of his time alone.

Outside, the clouds were sullen and grey, every so often sending angry rain lashing against the windows. When the storms broke there was only the wind. Don sat up and turned the television off – he'd seen the movie already, and knew how it ended.

There was a knock at the door. He stood, wondering for a moment who could be coming to visit him. It wouldn't be his father; Alan didn't like Don's apartment, having opined once that it was "too stark, with bad lighting." With a strange pang Don realized that there was not a single person he could think of who would come by just to be there. Charlie had been a rare visitor, but he had been… well, a visitor.

He thumbed the lock back and opened the door to see the shyly smiling face of Amita. She adjusted the messenger bag slung over her shoulder and gave a small, hesitant wave. "Hi," she said.

"Hey," replied Don in surprise. "What are you doing here?" It came out mildly, but Amita blushed anyway.

"May I…" she started, gesturing at the door, and Don stood back to allow her entry. Once inside, she set her bag on the floor, then seemed to think better of it and picked it up again. "Sorry," she muttered. "I feel a little awkward."

"No, come on in. The place is kinda messy, but I figure you've seen enough of… Larry's office to be used to some clutter."

He hadn't fooled her. "You were going to say Charlie's."

"Guess I was." He sat down on the couch and she took the chair, her elbows perched on her knees. Her hair, Don saw, was wet in places and was sticking to the sides of her head. "You get caught in the rain?"

"A little. It's been one of those changeable days."

"Goes from nasty to nastier." She was looking at the floor, and Don craned his head a little to try to meet her eyes. "So… what's going on?"

Outside, the rain had come back, pelting the panes in sheets. Visibility was impossible; to Don, it looked a little like the rest of the world had taken a day off. Only this building, this room, remained.

Amita managed to meet his eyes. "How are you?" she asked.

"Well, I'm back at work," Don said. "Taking care of some of the backlog now, trying to get myself back up to speed."

"That's good," Amita replied evenly, "but it doesn't answer my question. How are you?"

"I'm… you know, fine." He grinned. "You checking up on me?"

She shook her head and smoothed a couple of damp curls behind her ear. "No. Well, sort of. It's just that… Larry and I don't see you anymore. On campus. And we've been wondering how you've been." She trailed off, but regained her footing. "He was going to come with me, but said he thought it might feel too much like an intervention." She cocked her head to the side, sending the wet hair tumbling back from behind her ear; she ignored it, focusing all her attention on Don. "But you're fine."

He stood and walked to the window. What was it that Larry had said? _I find sometimes that spontaneous ambulation allows my thoughts to flow more freely. There've been rather too many of them, I have to say. _"Yeah, fine, whatever that means. I mean, my brother died, I think I'm handling it okay."

"No one's saying you aren't," said Amita gently. "Larry and I just wanted to make sure that you knew that you aren't alone." She was hugely flushed now, and when Don looked at her he could see the anxiety this was causing her. It occurred to him that he wasn't sure how he thought of Amita, or of Larry. As a categorization, People I Know Because My Brother Worked With Them When He Was Alive was pretty lousy.

They were more, Don realized. The two of them had sat on either side of him, more than once, and helped dispel some of the horror of that first week. They had been there every day, all seven days of shiva, and at the end of each day they had both held his hands and recited that somehow beautiful phrase: _Ha'makom yenachem etkhem betokh she'ar avelei Tziyon vi'Yerushalayim. _May God comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. It _had_ been a comfort.

Why hadn't he gone to see them? It might be too much for him to go to Cal Sci just yet, but hell, Los Angeles was a big place, and there were other locations than Cal Sci. Why hadn't he picked up a telephone, just to say hello, just to bridge the silence? Most importantly, why hadn't _he_ been checking up on _them_? They too had suffered a huge loss; why hadn't he at least asked how they were doing once in awhile? For God's sake, these people were his… friends.

He smiled at her, and some of the nervousness left her eyes. "Thanks," he said. "It's been hard, yeah, but it's getting better." He held out a hand to her, and she rose uncertainly. "C'mon," he said, "I want to show you something."

She followed him to the doorway of his bedroom, stopping just short of the threshold. He went to his closet (noting with only distant guilt his unmade bed) and delved into it, to the furthest hanger. He didn't let himself think about what he was doing, just yanked the hanger down and out. Amita drew breath.

He was holding a shirt that had once been solid white but was now stained to a deep brown on the front and on part of one sleeve. Both cuffs were unbuttoned. Next to the right shoulder, there was a tear in the fabric, about three or four inches long. Amita took the hanger from him in a dazed sort of way, one long finger tracing the gash. "Is this…"

"It's the shirt I was wearing that day," said Don, surprised at the calmness of his voice. "I was planning to throw it away, or burn it or something, but I stopped when I saw the tear." He ran a hand through his hair. "I don't remember doing it, to tell you the truth. There's a name for it, but I can't –"

"Keriah," said Amita, still tracing the jagged threads. "The ritual rending, it's called keriah."

"That's right. You should give me lessons; you know way more about this than I do." He'd hoped it would make her smile, but he got only a ghost. And no wonder; even he had trouble looking at the bloodstained shirt.

"Are you going to mend it?" she asked. She thrust the shirt at him and shook her hands, as though to rid them of dirt.

"No," said Don. "I'd never wear it again anyway. I'm just hanging onto it, is all." He put the hanger back in the closet, as far away as he could manage.

"I couldn't keep something like that," said Amita slowly. She was shaking her head, her face blankly staring. Her feet moved her backward through the door; she looked as though she didn't know she was moving at all. Don followed her as a slight feeling of alarm began to tug at his mind. What had he been thinking?

"Amita," he heard himself say, "I'm… God, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have shown you."

"No," she said, and her eyes cleared. She even managed a smile. "No, it's okay. I guess I was just a little unprepared." She still looked a bit dazed, and she shivered minutely.

"I'm sorry," Don repeated helplessly. Her shoulder, when he touched it, was cold. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said.

"Really? I mean, yeah, that's the standard answer for when someone asks you how you are or if you're okay. I know I've said it enough times over these past few weeks."

"And it's been a lie every time."

She had said it so quietly that Don was at first unsure that she'd said it at all. The words fluttered across his brain and did not register until her guilty eyes snapped to his. When they did not back down, he knew that she had actually said it. To his absolute astonishment, the prevailing feeling welling in his chest was not anger or indignance; it was a deep and terrible species of relief. She was right. He was not fine. He had not been fine for six weeks.

All of this went through his mind in the time it took to draw a breath. "Yeah," he said. "My mom died a year and a half ago, and it was… awful, but there was a way to prepare. Didn't make it any easier, not really, but it wasn't, y'know, sudden. But with Charlie, it was like… no chance to register it. He was just standing there." He shrugged, very aware of her eyes on his face. "And then he wasn't. I saw him fall. I see him fall every day. So yeah, it's been a lie. I'm not fine."

"Neither am I," she admitted. "Neither is Larry. We're moving on, and it's taking time, and every day it's a little easier. Not much," she added, smiling faintly, "but a little. We talk, Larry and me. We talk about him, and sometimes about you." She took one of his hands and held it in both of her own. "You should know… we're both around. And easy to find. You know Larry, he practically lives in his office. So if you ever decide that you'd like a break from the FBI or your apartment, we'd like to see you. If you want to talk about anything, well," and here she smiled again, more broadly, "you have friends."

He put his free hand over hers and squeezed. "Thanks," he said, rather more hoarsely than he'd intended. "I'll think about that."

She squeezed back and dropped his hand. "Good," she said. Her face became solemn again. "How's your dad?"

"He's spending a lot of time gardening," Don answered. "Probably out there now."

"In this?" asked Amita, aghast. "He'll get pneumonia!"

"Let's go see him," said Don suddenly. "I haven't been to visit him in awhile, and hey, he'd love to see you."

"Really?"

"Yeah, he's crazy about you. Always talks about how pretty you are. What do you say?" He smiled at her, feeling almost normal for the first time in what felt like an eternity. In response, she shrugged her bag higher onto her shoulder and gestured toward the door.

"Okay," Don said. "Let's go."


End file.
